School-to-work transitions and health inequalities among young adults

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Nico Dragano; Professorin Dr. Claudia Pischke
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research ; Public Health, Healthcare Research, Social and Occupational Medicine
• Term: from 2019 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 384210238

After secondary education, a time of social stratification and mobility begins. This stage of ‘school-to-work-transitions’ usually occurs between 16 and 24 years and is a crucial period both for entire life courses and for later health. The presence of socioeconomic inequalities in health at this stage is therefore specifically problematic and needs to be studied explicitly. Thereby, various determinants on individual-level must be taken into account (behavioural, material, and psychosocial factors), but also the fact that these individual determinants are incorporated in more distal institutional contexts at the meso level, attended at this stage of life (e.g. universities, vocational schools). Each of these institutions provides distinct contexts that directly and indirectly influence health, and that may aggravate or decrease health inequalities. An in-depth understanding of associations between socioeconomic position (SEP) and health of young adults, thus, needs to consider the complex interrelation of individual and institutional factors.Yet, there is a striking lack of research on the role of meso-level factors during ‘school-to-work-transitions’. It is the overall aim of this subproject to provide new evidence on this issue. Research questions are:1. Which individual-level determinants (behavioural, material, and psychosocial) contribute to an association between SEP and health among young adults?2. Is the association between SEP, individual-level determinants and health influenced by the type of institution entered during school-to-work transitions (e.g. vocational training vs. university)?3. Which contextual characteristics of single institutional units (e.g. of work environments) affect health inequalities among young adults? Based on a literature review, the project will first summarize current evidence on health inequalities during school-to-work transitions and generate a conceptual framework for the empirical part, which covers three empirical case studies. The first study uses longitudinal data from the starting cohort 4 of the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) and investigates how health inequalities develop from the ages of 16 to 24 years, how individual-level factors contribute to health inequalities and how different institutional contexts moderate or mediate health inequalities. Studies 2 and 3, in contrast, focus on single institutions and their distinct characteristics, using the two examples university (longitudinal, NEPS, starting cohort 5, university students) and vocational training/work (cross-sectional, ‘Jugenderwerbstätigenbefragung’).Results will be delivered to the Coordination Project as a contribution to the overall multi-level model of health inequalities from birth to young adulthood. Findings of this subproject are an important component as they shed light on a crucial life stage for health in later life and on key societal institutions.

• DFG Programme: Research Units
• Subproject of: FOR 2723: Understanding the institutional context of health inequalities among young people. A life stage approach
• International Connection: United Kingdom
• Co-Investigators: Professor Dr. Peter Angerer; Dr. Thomas Muth; Professor Dr. Bernd Richter; Privatdozent Dr. Morten Wahrendorf; Dr. Simone Weyers
• Cooperation Partner: Professor Tarani Chandola, Ph.D.